20 - Referendum Result

The Prime Minister can spin all she likes but one speech on the last day of campaigning and one cosy interview does not a campaign make. Now I have extended the invitation for cross-party talks on a new devolutionary settlement but the Prime Minister seems about as happy to attend as she was happy to knock on doors with the Better Together campaign. Having done both I can say with complete certainty that the people of Scotland want us to come together and truly empower the Scottish Parliament, the Prime Minister is welcome to come and meet with opposition parties, in fact I would welcome it myself. The Prime Minister needs to stop spinning her reform bill and start working with all parties to meet the needs of the Scottish people.

Mr. Croft’s words today are unbelievably uncalled for. To lay claim that these results show that it’s the Conservatives who truly and everyone else was a sidekick id abhorrent you dishonest. This is proof positive that all the Tories cared about was themselves

It is a testament to the failed leadership of Ari Suchet that in her first speech after the referendum she spends more time attacking the Conservative Party than she does laying out the Government's plan for Scotland. The Prime Minister's attacks are baseless and rooted in falsehoods - our party ran an incredibly positive, optimistic campaign focused on the value of our Union. Dylan Macmillan spent virtually all of his time on the ground in Scotland, meeting with voters to discuss their concerns and make the case for why Scotland is better off in the Union. We hit the ground running on this campaign not because it was politically advantageous, but because fighting for Scotland to remain in our Union is the right thing to do. It's a shame that the Prime Minister, who failed to visit Scotland even once during the campaign, would turn what should have been a unifying moment into a chance to score political points at our country's expense.

The Prime Minister's speech today said it all really didn't it? She's much more interested in talking about her terrible economic plan or her road map to constitutional crises than she is about talking about the future of Scotland. Her speech contained but a handful of mentions of Scottish devolution instead choosing to wax lyrically about certain members of her cabinet, attack the Tories, and try and sell a budget that was so bad it had to be withdrawn once and then returned only to ignore every deficit commitment her party and her government ever made. Whilst I am not surprised that the woman who only joined the campaign in the final hours with a speech and a fireside chat is not interested in the future of the Scottish Parliament she should at least meet with opposition parties to thrash out a future for Scotland that we can all put our names to.

The intent of Ari Suchet's hyper-partisan speech in Glasgow could not be more clear: to distract from the fact that she and senior Government members all but completely failed to participate in the Better Together campaign. The Prime Minister didn't campaign in Scotland once, and that's a fact. Amongst the Government's Great Officers of State, only the Chancellor could be bothered to campaign, making a brief appearance to discuss the pound. You don't have to take my word for it, look for yourself: look back at the media coverage of the campaign and determine for yourself who did and who didn't bother to join the Better Together campaign effort.

The Government couldn't be bothered to campaign for our Union when it mattered. They sat on the sidelines, hedging their bets, and now they're hoping to rewrite history in their favor. I won't let them, because the British people deserve better.

Labour are out in force saying that the Conservative Party put party above country during the campaign, frankly this is utter balderdash. Whilst Faye Gallacher is rightly lauded as the star of Labour's part of the campaign there wasn't much competition to be frank, the Prime Minister couldn't place Scotland on the map until the dying hours of the campaign and didn't knock on a single door with the members of the Better Together campaign, the Chancellor disappeared after a single interjection never to be seen again north of Hadrian's Wall, and none of the rest of the Labour portion of the Cabinet (including the Home Secretary) even bothered to make the trip at all. It says something when the Liberal Democrats manage to do more on the final day of campaigning (the only time Graham turned up at all) than the entire Labour portion of the cabinet outside the Health Secretary did at all.

Today I was in Edinburgh with volunteers who worked tirelessly for the Better Together campaign because it is voters like the 40% of Edinburgh who voted "yes" to leave the United Kingdom that we will have to win back if we are to continue going forward as a cohesive and united family of nations. Edinburgh is a city the the Better Together campaign won on the back of campaign pledges like the ones I reiterated and expanded upon today in my speech making it essential that we move forward now to deliver upon the mandate of this referendum result. It was an honour to work with so many volunteers up and down Scotland to help deliver the vote for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom and I am committed to continuing to work with them to deliver upon the mandate of that same vote.

Now that we've established the true intent of Ari Suchet's speech in Glasgow, let's take a moment to analyze the little she did say about the Government's plans for Scotland. The Prime Minister indicates that the Government will move to implement the reforms she mentioned during the campaign: more authority over income tax, giving Scotland "more power" over their Parliament, and "expanded powers" over welfare and energy policy. All things considered, the Prime Minister's "plan" amounts to nothing more than vague assurances of increased power, with little to no actual detail on what those powers are and how they'll be increased. The Government's inability to create and stick to a real plan for serious devolution is a disservice to the Scottish people, and wreaks of the exact sort of disingenuous politicking that led to the independence referendum in the first place. I am proud that the Conservative Party has a legitimate and comprehensive plan for Scottish devolution, and deeply hope we find ourselves in power in order to implement it fully.

The people of Scotland have voted, and the majority have voted to remain in the United Kingdom. However, they have only done so by a 9% difference. At this time we need to be united, if we are to move forward as a United Kingdom. Now is not the time for the Prime Minister's divisive speech. The referendum is over - we do not need the Prime Minister in her first major speech since the referendum result to bang on about Project Fear, the tactics of the SNP and the Yes Campaign or what she disagreed with in the No Campaign. No one is interested in that. That is in the past, and the Prime Minister has shown that she would rather continue to discuss past divisions, rather than putting them to one side and concentrating solely on the future of the Union.

I've been listening to Labour talk about the referendum campaign and make a stink about partisan behavior, but from what I recall in the run-up to the referendum they were too busy jamming slapdash constitutional reform that was introduced with no electoral mandate and in contravention of their last manifesto through Parliament. What's more, the PM was clearly too busy with her vanity project to actually get out on the campaign trail...she gave an interview and she gave a speech and only did that much when it became clear that tensions were building within the Better Together campaign, probably after some of her party's Scottish members let her have it behind the scenes. One suspects that she was too busy trying to put out the dumpster fire that her Reform Bill has ignited over in the Lords to bother to save the Union.

Her party's comments since then are totally divorced from reality. The Prime Minister and her cronies have made a lot of hay about partisan behavior, but if they want a reality check then they really need to look in the mirror more often than the Daily Mirror. Simply repeating a bunch of talking points worthy of a partisan tabloid is not going to make them true, and if the PM really is that far into her party's bubble then I fear that the referendum campaign is going to be seen as the tip of the iceberg with Labour's troubles.

The Liberal Democrats welcome the decision by the people of Scotland to stay within the United Kingdom. Throughout this campaign, the Liberal Democrats emphasised the benefits of cooperation, the virtues of openness, and the importance of our union for prosperity, security and progressive values. This decision will allow the people of Scotland to continue to benefit from the opportunities and prosperity that comes from being part of the union and the people of the United Kingdom as a whole to continue to benefit to the immeasurable contributions the Scottish people make to public life. The 'no' vote will allow us to, together, return our focus to the issues that make substantive improvements to the lives of ordinary people.

Graham Adiputera (Lib Dem - Sutton and Cheam)
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Climate Change
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Technology

I am immensely grateful to the work that Liberal Democrat MPs, MSPs, councillors and activists made towards the Better Together campaign. It is a point of pride that the areas with Liberal Democrat MPs returned some of the strongest 'No' votes. As a party, we remained laser-focused on the need to hold the SNP's impractical vision to account - including talking of its implications for the challenges we all face - and in setting out a positive and optimistic reason for remaining within the UK. Going forward, the Liberal Democrats - a party with a proven and principled commitment to devolution and federalism - will argue for more powers to be given to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people.

Graham Adiputera (Lib Dem - Sutton and Cheam)
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Climate Change
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Technology

Let's be blunt, though - the referendum result was closer than we anticipated and I think the Better Together campaign and its supporters need to be honest and forthright in discussing why that happened. I think part of the solution is taking some of the issues behind the referendum result - a feeling of political or economic malaise, for example - and talking more about the many positive steps the government is taking in those areas. Our ambitious political reform and investment programme, for instance.

The other is acknowledging that some in the Better Together campaign saw an opportunity not to unite, but to divide, to use the de facto truce in party politics as a chance to score party political points. Those who used the Better Together campaign as a chance to slam political opponents placed their careers over the country, and I make no apologies for condemning them. The most egregious example, by far, was the Conservative MP Steven Andrews using the debate over the referendum to launch into a hyperbolic attack against the government.

Graham Adiputera (Lib Dem - Sutton and Cheam)
Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Climate Change
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Technology

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